This page explains how the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) plans, tenders, builds, and guarantees the city's roads — the machinery behind the numbers on this dashboard. It is written to inform, not to accuse: most of what follows comes from BMC's own processes and public reporting, with sources at the end.
Two systems, not one
The concretisation programme. Most of the roads on this dashboard belong to BMC's citywide push to replace asphalt roads with cement-concrete ones. It is run centrally, not by ward offices. The chain, simplified: an Executive Engineer prepares the estimate → the tender is floated on the state e-procurement portal (a three-packet system covering eligibility, technical, and financial bids) → technical scrutiny by the zone's Deputy Chief Engineer (Roads) → Chief Engineer (Roads & Traffic) → Additional Municipal Commissioner (Projects) → final approval. The work was bundled into a few very large zone-wise packages and awarded to large infrastructure firms with highway-grade experience.
Ward-level maintenance. The lettered ward offices (A, K/W, M/E…) handle the roads not yet concretised — pothole patching with mastic asphalt and cold-mix, tendered as smaller recurring contracts. This is reactive repair, not construction. The dashboard's "Open tenders" panel lists only central Roads & Traffic Department tenders (concretisation packages, zone-wide pothole and trench-reinstatement contracts), not these ward-office works.
Why concrete, and why it takes so long
The concretisation programme uses M40-grade cement concrete — a deliberately heavy specification chosen because concrete rarely develops potholes, unlike asphalt which fails every monsoon. Concrete, however, takes longer to lay and cure.
Everything runs on the monsoon rhythm: roads are dug from roughly October to May, and every year BMC directs that ongoing works be brought to a safe or completed state before the rains (by 31 May). A road that misses that window generally waits out the monsoon.
The chronic delay driver, per BMC's own officials, is what sits under the roads: decades of water, sewage, power, gas, and telecom lines, many of them unmapped. Contractors discover them only when they dig, and each discovery means redesign, utility-shifting, and lost weeks. It is one reason a "simple" road can spend years under barricades.
Is "pothole-free" actually measured?
Publicly, no. BMC's public dashboard (this site's data source) tracks delivery — each project's status, dates, and a progress photo — and stops there. Whether a completed road stays pothole-free is not publicly tracked: pothole complaints live inside BMC's mobile app with no public feed, and the promised public pothole dashboard has been marked "under maintenance." The programme's core promise — the outcome, not just the output — currently has no public measurement.
The contractor guarantee most people don't know about
Road contracts in Mumbai carry a defect-liability period: a window after completion during which the contractor repairs road defects at its own cost.
- For the concretisation programme, BMC withholds a 20% bank guarantee for 10 years, released at 2% per year. Potholes appearing in that window are the contractor's to repair at their own cost.
- More generally, concrete roads in the city carry roughly 5–10-year guarantee periods and asphalt roads about 3 years; a contractor whose road fails in-period faces withheld deposits and frozen work.
- Critics argue these windows are too short: a 2017 Maharashtra PWD resolution envisages concrete roads built to a 30-year standard, and some groups have asked for matching defect-liability periods.
- The courts add pressure of their own: the Bombay High Court has fixed compensation of ₹6 lakh for pothole deaths and held both civic bodies and contractors liable.
The honest caveat: the guarantee exists on paper, but whether it is invoked is itself not publicly tracked — there is no public register of roads under guarantee or of enforcement actions. That is why this dashboard marks completed roads with their estimated guarantee window: the entitlement is real, and knowing about it is the first step to using it.
Sources
- ThePrint — "BMC's road concretisation project has turned Mumbai into a maze of rubble" (Feb 2025; procurement chain, utilities delays): https://theprint.in/india/governance/bmcs-road-concretisation-project-has-turned-mumbai-into-a-maze-of-rubble-why-its-going-south/2495926/
- Swarajya — fresh ₹6,079 cr concretisation tenders; 20% bank guarantee released over 10 years: https://swarajyamag.com/news-brief/mumbai-bmc-invites-fresh-tenders-worth-rs-6079-cr-to-concretise-400-km-of-city-roads
- Mumbai Live — contractor responsibility for potholes within guarantee periods: https://www.mumbailive.com/en/civic/contractor-responsible-for-road-pit-44791
- Free Press Journal — Sajag Nagrik Manch on defect-liability norms vs the 2017 PWD resolution: https://www.freepressjournal.in/mumbai/maharashtra-roads-sajag-nagrik-manch-alleges-civic-bodies-ignoring-defect-liability-norms-for-infrastructure-projects
- Bombay High Court pothole-death compensation reporting: https://news.courtpractice.com/2025/10/bombay-high-court-fixes-6-lakh.html
- BMC public roads dashboard (this site's data source): https://roads.mcgm.gov.in/publicdashboard/
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